1. One

I saw him pull her hair as he dragged her down the hallway. My father said he loved my mom, said he'd always love her when they got married. I don't think he meant it because if he really loved her, he wouldn't have thrown her around like a rag doll. That night in January 2008, I didn't know what to do because I was a little, scared twelve year old. Mom was yelling and screaming while I was crying. She was saying to call the police because "mommy is being hurt." At the same time, my father was pushing me away from the two, telling me to go back to bed, as he continued to drag her to the bedroom, causing her knees to get a bad case of rug burn. It was horrific, but that's an understatement. That night, after I left the bathroom from my mom with her blood smeared all over the white bathroom floor and toilet, I slept with my brother quietly. He had been asleep during the screaming and fighting and I don't know how. Behind the master bedroom door, my mom was being raped by my father. I heard her scream more and I went to check up on her by knocking hard on the door, almost breaking it down. I was only thirteen and I didn't know how to deal with this, so I left with tears down my face to sleep by my brother in our bed. The following morning my mom called the police and I watched as they took Father to jail. He told me that he loved me and I said I loved him too. I didn't know what to do; I loved both of my parents. Now, only my mom. Skipping over a month, that's when he came home from jail. We visited him once and we were ecstatic when we did. We were crying, begging Mom to let him come home. Being as young as I was, I didn't know what a dilemma this was for my mom. He came home and not even two weeks later, he beat my mom again. My brother was once again asleep. This time, my mom knew it was coming. She hid in the Nissan pickup truck we had and we--being my father and I--were searching for her. I didn't know why she was hiding or when she began to hide, but all I knew was that we had to find her. I eventually did and, still being the dumb thirteen year old, I told my father. I found her with a bottle of Moscato, her favorite liquor. She had blankets and pillows and everything ready like she was leaving. She wasn't going anywhere that night when Father found her. He took her right there in front of me, took her the same when he did in January: down the hallway on her knees, pulling her hair with her screaming at the top of her lungs. He did everything the same, even the rape. Both times, I didn't know what to do. My throat hurt so bad for the longest time from yelling and hollering and crying simultaneously. Everything else hurt so bad because I was torn. And now, looking back on it, I feel like a dumb fool for not calling the cops when my mom shouted at me to. I could've stopped all of that right then and there. But no. I had to love, I had to love both of them. I couldn't make the right decision, as always, because I was torn. He ended up going to jail again anyways because my mom called the police the following morning. We relocated to a different city in the U.S. so he wouldn't find us; he found us but didn't get near us. He contacted my mom several times, complaining to her and telling her to "get her ass back to him." We then moved out of the country because he got his passport revoked and he can't leave the U.S. My mom told me something that hurt so much more than anything else in the entire world. She said that the second time I witnessed Father beat her wasn't the second time. It had been the fourth time. That wasn't the worst part. This is: "The second time you saw me get hurt," she said, "your father said that if I screamed one more time, he would take my gun and put a bullet in yours and your brother's heads." That means that my mom saved her two children's lives. She could've screamed her head off loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear (and I bet they did hear her before but they didn't want to come over to help) so she could get help, but no. She balanced the scale between her life and ours, and she weighed more over on her kids'. Now it's 2015 and I'm eighteen, turning nineteen next month in August. We now live in the United Kingdom. I know well enough now to call the police if that ever happens again, but I know it won't because my mom and dad (step dad, Matt) have been together for five happy years now. Everything is good and dandy. Three years ago in 2012, they had a baby and named him Ethan. My mom and dad met and started dating a year after the whole terrible squabble with my father went down. At the time, she was in the military, and that's how they met. Mom wasn't scared or shy; she went right up to my dad and he said, "What do you want, Specialist?" She replied, "A dinner and a movie, Sergeant. Tonight at seven." She walked away and that night, they went on their first date at Applebee's. My brother and I met him one week later and he was great! We approved. And now, five years later, they're a wonderful five-piece family with Ethan, Dylan (my oldest little brother, my full-blood brother), my mom, my dad, and Elizabeth. Liz is a little girl my parents adopted last year because my dad wanted a little girl in place of me. (Keep in mind that my mom is eleven years older than my dad, so my dad is 31 and my mom is 42, so of course my dad would want another baby of his own.) I said "in place of me" because I left the house three years ago as soon as I turned sixteen. It wasn't my choice to leave; they kicked me out. It makes sense to me now because they don't want my behavior to be a choice of influence for the little ones. It sucks for me, but I guess it's better for my family. Yes, I'm still angry with them for kicking me out. Who wouldn't be? Aren't you supposed to stick with your family through thick and thin, for better or worse, for sick or health? Not my family; when things get rough, they leave. That's why my mom dated so many guys before she got married to Matt, because she couldn't trust any of them. The four guys she dated in those two years were terrible. Each of them stole something from my mom, but the one thing the last man took was precious: Her sole trust. They all lost her trust, but the final guy did the last thing Mom ever thought he wouldn't do. He stole my virginity. This man raped me like it was nobody's business. He saw me, talked to me like a dad would, and strapped me to the bed so I wouldn't get help. He knew that everyone else would be out--Dylan would be in school, Mom would be at work--so he took terrible advantage of me in the two hours we had alone. (I was in middle school and Dylan was in elementary, so I had two hours until he got home.) That day, I cried and cried and cried. It was the worst day of my personal life, knowing that my first time wouldn't be with someone I loved or trusted or someone I knew. It killed me.